The vote of the European Parliament Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) on 3rd September is an improvement of how the Market Surveillance System could function in the EU.

While back in December last year, APPLiA, representing the home appliance industry in Europe, was highlighting that right focus and financial resources are the solution to achieve a fully-fledged Goods Package instead of giving unlimited superpowers to national market surveillance authorities, our industry sees the report as a positive upgrade.

“APPLiA is particularly satisfied to see the proportionality principles underlined”, the Director General of APPLiA, Paolo Falcioni said and added that a level playing field for all actors on the European Single Market is essential.Home appliance manufacturers have been emphasising that physical checks over mere paper checks would best ensure the compliance of products with the EU legislation. The IMCO Committee correctly points out that “administrative and automated checks cannot serve as a substitute to physical checks which guarantee the substantial compliance of a product with the relevant Union legislation”.

“When it comes to the the possibility for cooperation between market surveillance authorities and economic operators, as we know from experience with the ATLETE projects, this approach works in practice. Seeing it foreseen in the legal text is a very good way forward”, Falcioni explained.

The laboratory testing process is also starting to be better aligned with the real need of market surveillance experts and the industry. Setting up Union testing facilities should indeed not restrict the authorities to freely select a laboratory that would allow the performance of a test of as high quality as the officially chosen ones.

At this stage, we look forward to next legislative steps, which will boost European market through better market surveillance.